Friday, October 29, 2010

Peas on Bikes

It must be funny to be a swelling Pea inside someone else's Pod. You have no say, you just have to lie in there, perhaps kick a bit, drink some fluid, grow. Maybe punch on a bladder, tug on some cord...

I wonder if it's boring.

I wish I could remember what is was like. In some way I feel I have some sense of it. I remember not wanting to come out, but that is probably just because of the forcep story. It must be nice to be warm, and not have to face up to the responsibilities of the Outside. In there it all seems so simple.

I wonder what she can feel.

Last night the Pod went on a bender - did she feel that? Perched at the bar with the boys, drinking her first beer, knocking back shots, downing a huge burger. Smoking ciggies. The bartender was cute and thoughtful, and helped her be part of it, bringing her a tiny glass of watery ale, then filling her shot glass with surreptitious Sprite, so the Pod could clink and squeal with the dudes like she would back in the day. And the Pod got Drunk, drunk on joy, on life, on being a Pod in Berlin with Boys, on the loud heavy metal music and the oily fare, on the funny stories, on the rising drunkenness around her.

And then like a ten-year-old she mounted the little peewee kids bike and rode with the Boys through Mauer Park, past all the windows in the sport centre which gave her a belly laugh as she caught her reflection. She looked bizarre on that bike with its tiny wheels; like Elliot riding through the sky with ET stuffed under his jumper. A basketball on a BMX. And the cobblestones jiggled the Pea in the Park, so The Love helped them up on to the dirt track and she hobbled along there instead. And the Pod belly laughed again at the thought of herself. And the Pea did somersaults and jumped on her bladder.

They chained up the steeds on a trash-can pole outside Doctor Pong and went inside the smoky bar to down shots that looked like they had little bloody embryos drowning in them and this time the Pod just had orange juice. They call 'Round the World' 'China' in Berlin and they lined up at the Ping Pong Table to play China like they were lining up for rations and shuffled around the tiny table to the techno music with the other excited fools and tried to win but the Korean guy was too good every time. And the Pod sat down with her orange juice and knew she had to leave soon because of the cigarettes and a young man sat down next to her and said,

"Hallo. Where are you from?"

And she said,

"Hallo. Australia."

He had a cap on backwards and a scar on his cheek. He was smoking a heavy Marlboro. So was the Pea.

And The Pod thought - wow - is it? And she remembered how when her and The Love had run out of money she had said to him with woe, "And I can't even prostitute myself now!" That had always been the fallback. And The Love had said, "Well, I don't see why not. It's not as though you can get knocked up." She would have thought that, biologically speaking, a pregnant woman would be a no-go zone. Evidently not. She felt a tiny kick.

"We should go," she said to The Love, who was standing right next to her, having been eliminated again by the Korean.

"Bye friend," said The Pod and when they remounted the bikes she told The Love how she thought maybe the Dude was trying to pick her up and The Love said he was sure of it.